


Monsoon Season

by epersonae



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:53:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29805267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/pseuds/epersonae
Summary: Magnus considers fate while visiting the Temple of Istus.
Relationships: Julia Burnsides/Magnus Burnsides
Comments: 4
Kudos: 16





	Monsoon Season

**Author's Note:**

> LOOK WHO'S BACK! For once, I wrote a thing that just works with canon without a bunch of stuff connected to my other stuff, although it totally works that way too. (Not going to add it to any of my serieses right now, since I'm not sure where it falls in that timeline.)
> 
> I'm in EMDR therapy now, and I was working through a particular trauma, and I had what I can only describe as a religious epiphany, but for a religion that doesn't actually exist, so that's cool. Which meant that I had to project it on Magnus, like you do. FWIW, I feel a lot better about it now.
> 
> Also: I always visualize the Temple of Istus as sort of like the [SoCal church](http://saintelizabethchurch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/St.-Elizabeth-Church-Oct.-2013-002e.jpg) that I grew up going to, but with a clock instead of the bell, which I guess proves you can take the girl out of the Catholics but you can't entirely take the Catholic out of the girl?

All year long he lives in the place she loved, and that in itself feels like a memorial. But once a year, usually near her birthday, he crosses the continent to visit a place that she most likely would have hated: hot and dry with a hard wind that drives the dust into every possible crevice. This too is a sort of memorial. He's not much for reflection, usually, more of a man of action. Maybe that's why the moment stuck with him, a goddess weaving fate, his own choice to  _ not _ act. Maybe that's why he comes back here: to understand fate, or the past, or just himself. 

There's a rare overcast in the Gulch when he arrives at the newly built train station, and it makes the dusty streets and ramshackle buildings dark and somber. He pauses, as he often does, to stop and look at the statue of himself -- two statues, technically, one as the happy-go-lucky adventurer with his pals, one as a mysterious stranger. He doesn't quite feel like either of those men now. 

He's recognized, of course. That happens lots of places, but most of all in Refuge -- the dwarf woman from the bank waves and smiles as she stands out front on her break; a pair of teenagers who were probably kids when he popped the bubble stop talking when he passes: they nod, their eyes just a bit wide. Most places, he soaks in the attention, but here it sits on him uneasily. His fame comes from his own failure, in some sense, at least in this town. 

He doesn't stop to chat, or visit The Davy Lamp, or go into the general store, instead heading directly to the temple of Istus. Rebuilt, not glorious, but homely and sturdy in white plaster and red tile. The clock tower marks the time just as it did before his relic unmade this place. He touches the javelin strapped to his back: the old minute hand with its tip sharp enough to pierce time. 

Inside the air is cool, the light is dim, and the difference makes him aware of the weight of the air outside, the impending storm about to break. With a sharp exhale, he lets some of the tension out of his shoulders. 

When he lights a candle, he lets himself think of Julia, the way he saw her last, both in life and in the Chalice's vision: a bit distracted, busy, but smiling, teasing him gently. Sometimes, he forgets the shape of her smile, and so he stops to hold the memory before sitting on a long bench. 

The icon of Istus at the front of the temple doesn't exactly look like the actual goddess, but it's good enough. Not like he could do any better, he supposes. For a second, he wishes Luce had been with them -- she would have done a hell of a portrait. He's thought about trying to ask her to paint a portrait of Julia, but he knows his descriptions wouldn't do justice to his love. 

The first time he came here, after they thwarted the apocalypse, it was with the intent at raging at Istus. He'd been struggling, torn between the choice he'd made himself -- even with the Chalice's thrall, he knew he couldn't go back -- and what he had seen the goddess do to bend fate for them. She had let it happen, let Ravens Roost be destroyed and Julia buried there, and he was angry, and he wanted to call her here into her own temple. He'd wanted to call her to account. But she hadn't come, and he'd sat there, his grief heavy as a stone. 

The temple is quiet; he can hear someone moving around somewhere behind him, probably just Luca, tending to his duties. All around him, candles burn steadily. 

He hadn't known when his birthday was -- one of the details that came up blank or left him with a blinding headache. The concussion, they'd say, and eventually she decided they should celebrate their birthdays together, in the summer. He would bake a cake, a recipe he knew by heart even if he didn't know why. 

Now he can thread together the memory of making a chocolate cake for Julia with the memory of Taako on the Starblaster, walking him through a recipe "so simple even you can't fuck it up" -- Julia singing as she cut up strawberries lives side-by-side with Taako humming as he whisked ganache. 

The missing threads in the pattern, he thinks as he looks at the naive depiction of Istus's knitting. That's why she changed it, not to bend the rules for the three of them, but to allow them to restore what they had ruined. It's not the first time he's had that realization, but each time it becomes a little easier to bear. He looks at the needles and thinks of the thread of Julia's life: a flash of red and brown, the gleam of her smile, and then gone. But also there? 

And he remembers what it was to look at the actual creation of the goddess. You couldn't look at it, not really, it was too bright, too complex: unknowable. And directionless, not a pattern in any meaningful sense of the word. He's taken up crochet, something to do with his hands that isn't as hard on them as whittling. Two things, he's realized: coming up with a pattern that actually comes together is pretty hard, and you've got to work with what the yarn wants to do, can't force it to be something it's not. 

She doesn't  _ make _ the threads she's knitting, he thinks, not for the first time. Heck, the whole reason she noticed them is that they were threads quite literally out of place. He sighs. Have to work with what you've got -- it's like that with wood too, or metal. He remembers Julia cussing out a particularly obstinate bit of steel, and Steven walking her away from the forge. They talked, and she waved her hands as she kicked a stone across the yard, but Steven was slow and gentle, drawing her out with his own even warmth, asking her questions, until she remembered what she already knew. When she went back to the forge, her work was better, the knife straight and true. 

He comes here, to the temple of the goddess of fate, to remind himself of what he already knows is true. He chose not to change their fate, not to change  _ her _ fate, and there's sadness in that choice, but not regret. And Istus -- the image of the goddess faintly smiles, a faint echo of the figure who once stood before him -- he stands and lights another candle, this time for the goddess of fate herself. Outside, the clouds break open and the sound of rain beating on the tiles breaks the temple’s silence. Luca throws open the doors, and the smell of rain soaking into the dry earth fills the temple with the promise of desert wildflowers to come.


End file.
